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Robert Denerstein, Denver Rocky Mountain News

1. Black Snake Moan 2007 Because Black Snake Moan asks its characters to confront demons involving sin and sex, it stomps into an area that lives between exploitative movie trash and Southern Gothic literature. It's bold without being especially believable.
2. Freedom Writers 2007 Freedom Writers gradually finds its place in the cinematic classroom, telling a moving story and boasting a fine performance from Hilary Swank.
3. Bug 2006 By the end, the actors look as if they've been beaten to a near pulp, and the audience may share some of that feeling.
4. Failure to Launch 2006 The only thing I rooted for in Failure To Launch was for Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker -- the two leads -- to find better movies.
5. Fay Grim 2006 In the end Fay Grim probably shares one unfortunate quality with the Hollywood movies so reviled in IndieWorld: It may be an unnecessary sequel.
6. Mission: Impossible III 2006 For all the attempts at adding depth, it's likely that audiences will come away remembering the fireworks.
7. Slither 2006 If you like slime, Slither will push you down the slippery slope to big-screen pleasure.
8. United 93 2006 Others have attempted to tell us about Flight 93, but Greengrass may have made the definitive account, allowing his movie to unfold in real time.
9. The Wind That Shakes the Barley 2006 [Loach] has made an often handsome, always sobering movie that does what the best movies do: leave us a whole lot less sure about what we ought to think.
10. World Trade Center 2006 Stone defies those who think of him only as a provocateur in making a compact and emotionally charged story that illuminates a Sept. 11 tale few of us know -- and he does it with a respect bordering on reverence.
11. Bad News Bears 2005 Like its predecessor, Bears can be funny in a snide sort of way, but it doesn't have much kick. full review
12. Brick 2005 If Brick isn't totally successful, it does make Johnson a director to watch.
13. Brokeback Mountain 2005 The movie has a universal quality because it tells a story of unfulfilled lives and roots it in the well-observed specifics of a vanishing Western culture.
14. Broken Flowers 2005 Hold on to your hats. Jim Jarmusch, a director who always marches to his own strange drumbeat, has made an entertaining movie.
15. Casanova 2005 Aside from having little to say, the new edition of Casanova tries so hard to serve a crowd-pleasing buffet that it turns into a scattershot series of unrewarding nibbles.
16. Coach Carter 2005 No arguing with the message: The movie's eager to tell its audience (especially young viewers) that there's life beyond a basketball court, and they ought to prepare for it.
17. Color Me Kubrick 2005 Colour Me Kubrick earns a place on the shelf where all the oddballs reside, defying us to come up with reasons to justify their idiosyncratic existences -- and perhaps not caring whether we do.
18. Elizabethtown 2005 It's not easy to be life-affirming and satirical in the same breath, and Crowe can't quite manage the job.
19. Four Brothers 2005 Despite random bursts of ambition, Four Brothers ultimately feels like a genre movie, only without as much satisfying payoff as we might like.
20. Grizzly Man 2005 Grizzly Man tells one heck of a story, and it leaves us shaking our heads in amazement and disbelief.
21. Jarhead 2005 It's not easy to make an interesting movie about men who are bored, and Jarhead can't quite rise to the challenge.
22. Land of the Dead 2005 Romero obliges those who are less concerned with meaning than with hard-core gore.
23. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man 2005 I'm Your Man may be as close as we'll ever get to Cohen on film.
24. The Lost City 2005 Somewhere amid the bric-a-brac -- hot rhythms, ocean breezes and political upheaval and melodrama -- a movie languishes. Garcia never really finds it.
25. Neil Young: Heart of Gold 2005 One of the new year's most satisfying films. full review
26. Nine Lives 2005 In looking at the lives of nine very different women, Garcia often seems to be closing in on something essential, small suggestive moments that attempt to resonate with meaning. Some do. Some don't.
27. Old Joy 2005 You may find yourself asking whether anything's going to happen. But for those who can tolerate a slow-brewing movie, [director] Reichardt's work provides sufficient rewards.
28. The Producers 2005 On film, Lane and Broderick are stuck in manic overdrive, like a couple of guys who have been assigned the impossible task of reviving vaudeville.
29. Sahara 2005 Stands as one more bit of throwback entertainment that's better than I expected -- and not much more.
30. Serenity 2005 The movie runs on the fuel of sly intelligence, not to mention a healthy skepticism about mankind's ability to achieve anything that might be called progress.
31. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days 2005 [Jentsch] creates a deeply human portrait of a courageous young woman at a moment when that kind of courage seemed in terribly short supply.
32. This Film is Not Yet Rated 2005 You can tell that Dick, whose previous documentary Derrida showed that he had serious chops, is having fun with this one. And a good part of the fun involves providing entertaining educational highlights for the public.
33. The World's Fastest Indian 2005 Judging by the movie, you might admire Munro's achievement but probably wouldn't have wanted him for a neighbor.
34. Big Fish 2004 It's gentle and pleasing and I appreciated the mixture of oddness, whimsy and emotion that informs Burton's search for the place where truth and fiction meet.
35. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 2004 The effort can fascinate, even if the result doesn't always match.
36. Hotel Rwanda 2004 A story so powerful it can't help but speak to both the heart and the conscience.
37. Inside Deep Throat 2004 Might be more entertaining than instructive, but it manages to return us to a time when the world seemed crazy in a different sort of way.
38. Little Black Book 2004 Shrill and prone to annoying overstatement, Murphy poses the first of many problems with Little Black Book, a lame attempt to meld comedy, romance and satire.
39. Me and You and Everyone We Know 2004 Director Miranda July just might be the year's most exciting film discovery.
40. The Passion of the Christ 2004 Gibson makes many of the key scenes work.
41. Vera Drake 2004 Comes close to ranking with [Leigh's] best work, the searing Naked and the witty Topsy Turvy.
42. 21 Grams 2003 You won't soon forget the world that Gonzalez Inarritu creates.
43. American Wedding 2003 Funny when it needs to be. I don't know what more you can ask from the third installment of a series that has gone further than anyone reasonably could have expected.
44. Daddy Day Care 2003 Daddy Day Care may communicate with kids, too, but it should have spent a little more time communing with the comedy gods.
45. The Good Thief 2003 Allows cinematographer Chris Menges to work at his artful best, but in the end it seems as if Jordan has turned out a glamorized version of the kind of movies that were terrific partly because they were made on the cheap.
46. Identity 2003 Manufactured shock replaces gnawing fear and only meager attempts are made to liberate us from high-concept hell.
47. In the Cut 2003 A disappointment.
48. The Machinist 2003 A superior exercise in mood and atmospherics, a drama that springs from a place of deep disturbance.
49. Mona Lisa Smile 2003 A true rarity, an often-dumb movie about supposedly smart people.
50. Primer 2003 Like watching something that's always on the verge of being a movie.
51. Radio 2003 Please, Hollywood, no more inspiration, particularly if it feels about as authentic as canned laughter.
52. Something's Gotta Give 2003 In a rare -- if not entirely convincing -- bow to older audiences, Something's Gotta Give teams Nicholson with Diane Keaton in a romantic comedy that's funnier than it is trenchant.
53. Swimming Pool 2003 Deftly mixing eroticism, psychology and art, Ozon has made a provocative movie while adding another stunning performance to Rampling's collection.
54. Bloody Sunday 2002 Leaves you dazed and shaken, as if you, too, had been caught in the swirl of events that led to unspeakable sadness and a lot more bloodshed.
55. Bowling for Columbine 2002 A sweeping, sometimes insightful and often funny look at America's culture of violence.
56. Bukowski: Born into This 2002 Provides an overview of Bukowski's work and allows us to gaze into the soul of a man who built a fortress of toughness around his vulnerable core.
57. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys 2002
58. The Hours 2002 The acting, for the most part, is terrific, although the actors must struggle with the fact that they're playing characters who sometimes feel more like literary conceits than flesh-and-blood humans.
59. Igby Goes Down 2002
60. Irreversible 2002 There's less to Irreversible than meets even the most unblinking of eyes.
61. Maid in Manhattan 2002 Doesn't get the job done, running off the limited chemistry created by Ralph Fiennes and Jennifer Lopez.
62. Nicholas Nickleby 2002 It's stuffed with enough morsels to make it palatable.
63. The Pianist 2002 If The Pianist isn't great, it has touches of greatness in it.
64. Punch-Drunk Love 2002 The journey toward redemption feels more like a cinematic experiment than a full-blown movie.
65. The Rules of Attraction 2002 The nonstop artifice ultimately proves tiresome, with the surface histrionics failing to compensate for the paper-thin characterizations and facile situations.
66. Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams 2002 There's enough here to keep the sequel rocking, providing you can leave the adult in you at the door.
67. Star Trek - Nemesis 2002 Too much of Nemesis has a tired, talky feel.
68. Stuart Little 2 2002
69. The Sum of All Fears 2002
70. Super Troopers 2002
71. We Were Soldiers 2002
72. XX/XY 2002 There's probably a movie in XX/XY, but director Austin Chick doesn't seem to have found it.
73. Black Hawk Down 2001
74. The Animal 2001
75. Baran 2001
76. Bully 2001
77. The Fluffer 2001
78. Gosford Park 2001
79. The Musketeer 2001
80. No Such Thing 2001
81. Rat Race 2001
82. Session 9 2001
83. Wet Hot American Summer 2001
84. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle 2000 full review
85. Bread and Tulips 2000
86. Dark Days 2000 full review
87. The Man Who Cried 2000
88. Meet the Parents 2000 full review
89. Mission: Impossible 2 2000 full review
90. The Original Kings of Comedy 2000 full review
91. Our Song 2000
92. Quills 2000
93. Shaft 2000 full review
94. Titan A.E. 2000 full review
95. Traffic 2000
96. But I'm A Cheerleader 1999 full review
97. Velvet Goldmine 1998
98. The Omen 1976 full review
99. Minnie and Moskowitz 1971
100. Gojira 1954 Honda may not have created the most convincing-looking monster in cinema history, but he managed to give his sci-fi/horror movie a social relevance, particularly in postwar Japan.